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Who2 Biography:

Irving Berlin

, Composer
Irving Berlin
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  • Born: 11 May 1888
  • Birthplace: Temum, Russia
  • Died: 22 September 1989
  • Best Known As: The composer of "White Christmas"

Name at birth: Israel Baline

Tunes like "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Puttin' On The Ritz," "God Bless America" and "White Christmas" made Irving Berlin one of the most celebrated composers of 20th century America. The son of Russian immigrants who settled in New York City, Berlin did not know how to read music, but he earned money by singing and plinking tunes out on the black keys of pianos. By the time he died at the age of 101, many of his songs had become part of American culture, especially those that came from his musical plays or movie scores. His stage productions included This Is the Army and Annie Get Your Gun (the musical that made Ethel Merman a star), and among the movies he scored were the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929), Fred Astaire's Top Hat (1935), Holiday Inn (1942, with Astaire and Bing Crosby) and Easter Parade (1948, again with Astaire plus Judy Garland).

A typographical error in his early career led to his name being changed from I. Baline to I. Berlin; he adopted the name Irving Berlin for professional use.

 
 
American Theater Guide: Irving Berlin

Berlin, Irving [né Israel Baline] (1888–1989), songwriter. Emigrating from Russia while still a boy, he took a job at sixteen as a singing waiter and began composing songs, publishing his first one, “Marie from Sunny Italy,” in 1907. He soon was interpolating songs in Broadway shows and even sang some of his own melodies in the revue Up and Down Broadway (1910). The next year he won worldwide recognition with “Alexander's Ragtime Band.” His first complete score was for Watch Your Step (1914), followed by Stop! Look! Listen! (1915), The Century Girl (1916), and others. Berlin's all‐soldier show Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1918) and his score for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 introduced such hits as “Mandy” and “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” In 1921, in partnership with Sam Harris, he built the Music Box Theatre and initiated his own series of brilliant Music Box Revues. Other hits of the 1920s and 1930s include the Marx Brothers romp, The Cocoanuts (1925), the Great Depression spoof Face the Music (1932), and the masterful revue As Thousands Cheer (1933), from whose score came “Easter Parade” and “Heat Wave.” The political satire Louisiana Purchase (1940) was followed by another all‐soldier show, This Is the Army (1942). In 1946, after the death of Jerome Kern, Berlin hastily composed the music for what proved to be his biggest hit, Annie Get Your Gun. Berlin wrote and co‐produced a musical about the arrival of the Statue of Liberty in America, Miss Liberty (1949), but the show failed to run. His last two musicals took light‐hearted but jaundiced looks at politics: the popular Call Me Madam (1950) and the disappointing Mr. President (1962), which closed his career on a down note. Berlin was rarely the innovator that his rivals Kern, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers were, for his music often changed with and took direction from the popular forms of the moment. Some accused him of consciously oversimple writing, both in his melodies and lyrics, but his uncanny melodic ear and his gift for expressing basic feelings succinctly made him probably the most popular composer of his era. Kern said, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music, he is American music.” Biography: As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, Laurence Bergreen, 1990.

 
Artist: Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin

Born:
May 11, 1888 in Tumen, Russia

Died:
Sep 22, 1989 in New York City

Representative Songs:

"Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Cheek to Cheek"

Representative Albums:

Alexander's Ragtime Band, Irving Berlin in Hollywood, The Girl on the Magazine Cover

Similar Artists:

J. Russel Robinson, Alfred Newman, George M. Cohan, Al Jolson, Hoagy Carmichael, Fred Astaire, George Gershwin

Worked With:

Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer

Followers:

Bill Johnson, Luqman Hamza, Fred Astaire
  • Birth Name: Israel Baline
  • Alternative Name: Ren G. May
  • Genre: Soundtrack
  • Active: teens - '60s
  • Instrument: Songwriter

Biography

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) was the most successful songwriter of the 20th century. Though, like his contemporaries, he spent the better part of his career writing songs (usually both words and music) to be used in Broadway musicals, he is better remembered for the songs themselves than for the shows (and sometimes films) in which they were introduced. This is because Berlin was a master at the kind of music that flourished from the turn of the century until World War II, shows that were really just collections of production numbers, scenes, and novelty acts (organized vaudeville presentations, really) rather than the story musicals that became prevalent starting with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943. It is also because Berlin, who did not read music and could play the piano in only one key and only on the black notes (he used a special piano with a lever that changed keys for him and employed a musical secretary to notate his compositions), wrote songs, not scores.

But what songs! Out of more than a thousand, a short list would include "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (his first major hit, in 1911), "God Bless America," "A Pretty Girl Is like a Melody," "Always," "Blues Skies," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "How Deep Is the Ocean?," "Cheek to Cheek," "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "White Christmas," "There's No Business like Show Business," "I Love a Piano," "What'll I Do?" "Easter Parade," and "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." The last came from one of the two shows Berlin organized and performed in during the two world wars (he can be seen in the film version of the second one, This Is the Army).

Berlin became his own song publisher and built and owned a Broadway theater, the Music Box, to house his shows. Perhaps his greatest and his last hit came with the musical Annie Get Your Gun in 1946, though he did write three more before retiring in 1962. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
 
Writer:

Irving Berlin

  • Born: May 11, 1888 in Tumen, the Russian Empire
  • Died: Sep 22, 1989 in New York City, New York
  • Occupation: Writer
  • Active: '30s-'50s
  • Major Genres: Musical, Comedy
  • Career Highlights: Top Hat, Way Out West, Sayonara
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Cocoanuts (1929)

Biography

Everyone is fond of quoting Jerome Kern's famous assessment that "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." Remarkably, this tribute was made in the mid-1930s, at a point in time when Berlin had already been writing songs for nearly three decades, and still had three more decades' activity ahead of him. Born in a Russian Jewish ghetto to a cantor and his wife, Berlin was five when he and his family emigrated to America. Growing up on New York's Lower East Side, young Berlin sang for pennies on the streets, then moved up the performing scale to become a singing waiter. Though he never learned to read music, Berlin had taught himself piano sufficiently enough to write his first song, "Marie of Sunny Italy," in 1907; his first hit was 1911's "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Because he was only able to compose his songs in the key of F sharp major, he had a special key-transposing piano built to order. Berlin contributed songs to several editions of The Ziegfeld Follies (the 1919 edition featured his "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody"), and to dozens of Broadway musicals. Unlike such composers as Jerome Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein, Berlin wrote his songs independently of the libretto; as a result, it is possible to compile a list of Berlin's hits without knowing, or caring, what shows they were written for (he would not compose a genuine "integrated" musical--with songs specifically written to advance the plot--until 1945's Annie Get Your Gun). So prolific and successful was Berlin that some of his rivals circulated the rumor that he was not the author of his songs, but that in fact Berlin was exploiting an anonymous, underpaid black composer whom he kept hidden somewhere in Harlem! Berlin's association with movies began literally at the dawn of the talkie era: his "Blue Skies" was performed by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927). The first of his Broadway musicals to be adapted for films (and the only one without a hit song) was the 1929 Marx Bros. vehicle The Cocoanuts. Berlin wrote both the score and the original story for Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s Reaching for the Moon (1931), but when the producers decided to cut all but one of the songs before the film's release, the experience soured Berlin to the extent that he would not work in Hollywood again for another three years. Fortunately for us all, he returned to pen the tunes for such films as Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), On the Avenue (1936), Second Fiddle (1939), Easter Parade (1948), and of course Holiday Inn (1942), whence came the composer's most popular song, the Oscar-winning "White Christmas." Though Berlin's life story (his escape from Russia, his rise to fame, the tragic death of his first wife, his later elopement with a WASP heiress, etc.) had enough drama for ten films, he steadfastly refused to allow a biopic to be filmed. As compensation, Hollywood turned out several "catalogue" musicals in which Berlin's previously written songs were presented chronologically to reflect the social and political changes in 20th-century American society: Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Blue Skies (1946), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). Berlin himself appeared on camera to sing (more or less) his own "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," in This is the Army (1943), a film which also featured Kate Smith singing God Bless America, Berlin's favorite song--and the one for which he never earned a penny (he donated all royalties to the Boy Scouts of America). Berlin's last film work was his title song for 1957's Sayonara; five years later, he retired from Broadway with the disappointing Mr. President. Despite his hermit-like existence in his later years, Berlin continued to govern the activities of his own music-publishing company (formed in 1919) with an iron hand. In 1961, he briefly emerged from his cocoon to unsuccessfully sue the publishers of Mad magazine for printing parody lyrics to several of his more popular works. Twenty-five years later, he showed up in Washington DC to accept the Medal of Liberty from President Reagan. Irving Berlin's last public appearance was at a star-studded celebration given in honor of his 100th birthday. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
Music Encyclopedia: Irving Berlin

(b Temun, 11 May 1888; d New York, 22 Sept 1989). American songwriter of Russian birth. Having settled in New York in 1893, he worked as a street singer, a singing waiter and a song plugger. He achieved international success with his song Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911) and contributed to New York revues and operettas. From 1935 he wrote songs for film musicals, his best known being Top Hat (1935), On the Avenue (1937) and Annie Get your Gun (1946). He has published c 1500 songs and is one of the most versatile and successful popular songwriters of the 20th century.


 
Biography: Irving Berlin

The American composer Irving Berlin (1888-1989) produced about 800 songs, many of which attained worldwide popularity. His patriotic songs, especially "God Bless America," seemed to epitomize the mass American sentiments of the era.

Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline in Tyumen, Russia, on May 11, 1888. The family of nine fled the persecutions of Jews in Russia in 1893 and settled in New York City, where, like so many other immigrants of that time, they lived on the Lower East Side. The family's first years in America were very difficult - at one time they all sold newspapers on the streets. Israel, the youngest child, was first exposed to music in the synagogue in which his father occasionally sang as cantor; he also received singing lessons from his father.

When the boy left home at 14, he made money by singing in saloons on New York's Bowery. He attended school for two years but had no formal musical education; he never learned to read or notate music.

It was while working as a singing waiter that Israel Baline, collaborating with a coworker named Nicholson on a song entitled "Marie from Sunny Italy," became I. Berlin, lyricist. This was the name he chose to appear on the sheet music when the song was published shortly after, in 1907.

Subsequently, Berlin began to gain recognition as a clever lyricist. He provided words for "Queenie, My Own," "Dorando," and "Sadie Salome, Go Home." The last was something of a success, and he was hired by a Tin Pan Alley publisher to write words for new songs. Within a year, despite his continuing difficulty in writing English, Berlin was established as a rising talent in the popular-music business.

Somewhat belatedly music publishers became interested in exploiting ragtime, the highly original creation of African-American musicians in the South and Midwest during the 1880s and 1890s. Berlin contributed lyrics (and a few tunes) to several mild ragtime songs. In 1911 he wrote the words and music for "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which started toward worldwide popularity when sung by Emma Carus in Chicago that year. It is ironic that one of the most famous of all "ragtime" songs employs a few conventional syncopations but no real ragtime at all.

Berlin's fame soared. He wrote his first complete musical score in 1914, Watch Your Step, followed by Stop, Look, Listen. In the Army during World War I he wrote a successful soldier show entitled Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1919), which contained "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." In 1919 he founded his own music publishing company, Irving Berlin, Inc.

His most successful subsequent shows included Ziegfeld Follies (1919, 1920, 1927), Music Box Revues (1921-1924), As Thousands Cheer (1933), This Is the Army (1942), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), and Call Me Madam (1950). His best-known scores for films include Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), and Holiday Inn (1942).

Among Berlin's best known songs are "White Christmas" and "God Bless America" which are perennial holiday favorites to this day.

Commenting on the composer who produced more popular hits than any other of his generation, Harold Clurman wrote in 1949, "Irving Berlin's genius consists not so much in his adaptability to every historical and theatrical contingency, but rather in his capacity to discover the root need and sentiment of all our American lives."

Berlin's 100th birthday was celebrated in a televised special from Carnegie Hall. When he died in New York on September 22, 1989 he was remembered as a symbol of the nation. As fellow songwriter Jerome Kern was quoted in Alexander Woolcott's biography of Berlin: "Irving Berlin has no place in American Music. He is American Music."

Further Reading

Alexander Woollcott, The Story of Irving Berlin (1925), is an affectionate and stylishly written account of Berlin's early career. The Songs of Irving Berlin (1957?), a catalog of his works, was published by the Irving Berlin Music Corporation. For background on Berlin and American musical comedy see David Ewen, Complete Book of the American Musical Theater (1959; rev. ed. 1968) and The Story of America's Musical Theater (1961; rev. ed. 1968), Stanley Green, World of Musical Comedy (1960; rev. ed. 1968), and Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (1990).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Irving Berlin

(born May 11, 1888, Mogilyov, Russia — died Sept. 22, 1989, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. songwriter. The son of a Russian Jewish cantor, he and his family immigrated to New York City in 1893. He worked as a street singer and singing waiter, then began writing songs. His first published song, "Marie from Sunny Italy," appeared in 1907; a printer's error named him Irving Berlin. In 1911 he wrote the great hit of Tin Pan Alley's ragtime vogue, "Alexander's Ragtime Band." He may have written more than 1,500 songs. Some of his songs include "Cheek to Cheek" and "God Bless America." He scored many successful films; his score for Holiday Inn (1942) introduced "White Christmas," one of the best-selling songs of all time. Altogether Berlin wrote the scores for 19 Broadway shows (including Annie Get Your Gun, 1946) and 18 films.

For more information on Irving Berlin, visit Britannica.com.

 
US History Companion: Berlin, Irving

(1888-1989), popular songwriter. Born Israel Baline in Russia, Berlin came to the United States in 1893 and received his first music lessons from his father, a cantor. The young Berlin performed on the streets of New York's Lower East Side and as a singing waiter in Chinatown before taking a job as a song plugger. His first published song was "Marie from Sunny Italy" (1907), and it was a printer's error on the cover of the sheet music that gave him the "nom de musique" of Berlin.

Berlin achieved success as a performer in musical revues, which were a popular form of theatrical and musical entertainment in the United States during the years around World War I. He sang his own songs in Up and Down Broadway (1910) and composed the music for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911, 1919, 1920, and 1927. "Alexander's Ragtime Band," for which Berlin wrote both words and music, became an instant hit, and he composed the music for Watch Your Step (1914), a show that featured popular dancers Vernon and Irene Castle. He continued to compose musical revues, some of which were performed in New York's Music Box Theater, which he helped build. His famous song "Easter Parade" was composed for the revue As Thousands Cheer in 1933. World Wars I and II gave Berlin the inspiration for two of his most popular revues, Yip, Yip, Yaphank! (1918), which included the song "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," and This Is the Army (1942).

A self-taught pianist and composer, Berlin published more than fifteen hundred songs. Many were written for musical films that showcased such entertainers as Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. He wrote the scores for Top Hat (1935) and Holiday Inn (1942), which includes "White Christmas," one of his best-known songs. Ethel Merman helped popularize many Berlin songs in Annie Get Your Gun (1946) and Call Me Madam (1950). In 1939, Berlin published "God Bless America," for which he wrote both words and music.

Just as Berlin's music captured the ear of Americans, it was often heard at the White House. He played and sang informally for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his guests after one of the president's fireside chats in 1941. The composer wrote "It Gets Lonely in the White House" in 1948 to commemorate Harry Truman's election, and he used the song in a later show, Mr. President (1962). His output included love songs, dance numbers, and humorous pieces that appealed to Americans' desire for the singable melodies and upbeat lyrics. Berlin joined a cast of stars who performed at a special banquet on May 24, 1973, for more than six hundred prisoners of war recently returned from Vietnam. Gerald Ford awarded Berlin the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 10, 1977, in recognition of his long career and contribution to the popular culture of the United States.

Bibliography:

Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (1990); David Ewen, The Story of Irving Berlin (1950); M. Freedland, Irving Berlin (1974).

Author:

Barbara L. Tischler

See also Jazz; Music; Musical Theater.


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Berlin, Irving
(bərlĭn') , 1888–1989, American songwriter, b. Russia. Berlin's surname was originally Baline. Of his nearly 1,000 songs, Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911) was his first outstanding hit. In 1918, while he was in the army, he wrote, produced, and acted in Yip, Yip, Yaphank, which he rewrote in 1942 as This Is the Army. Berlin wrote songs for several of the Ziegfeld Follies and the Music Box Revue (1921–24) as well as the Broadway musicals As Thousands Cheer (1933), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Miss Liberty (1949), Call Me Madam (1950), and Mr. President (1962). He was the composer of numerous film scores, and several of his stage musicals were filmed. Among his best-known songs are “God Bless America,” “Easter Parade,” “White Christmas,” and “There's No Business Like Show Business.”

Bibliography

See C. Hamm, ed., Irving Berlin: Early Songs (1995), and R. Kimball and L. Emmet, ed., The Complete Lyrics of Irvine Berlin (2001); M. E. Barrett, Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir (1994); biographies by M. Freedland (1974), L. Bergreen (1990), and E. Jablonski (1999).

 
Works: Works by Irving Berlin
(1888-1989)

1914Watch Your Step. This musical features the composer's first complete music score, which relies almost entirely on ragtime tunes. It is one of the first Broadway productions to depend fully on music derived from African American sources.
1942This Is the Army. Berlin's patriotic army revue, an update of his World War I all-soldier show, Yip Yip Yaphank (1918), opens on Broadway on July 4 and includes three hundred soldiers in its cast.
1946Annie Get Your Gun. Brought in at the last moment due to the death of Jerome Kern, Berlin composes what most regard as his greatest score for this Rodgers and Hammerstein production, with book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. The smash hit includes standards such as "I Got the Sun in the Morning," "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)," and "There's No Business Like Show Business."

 
Fine Arts Dictionary: Berlin, Irving

A twentieth-century American writer of popular songs (words and music). His songs include “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” and “There's No Business like Show Business.”

 
Quotes By: Irving Berlin

Quotes:

"There's no business like show business."

"Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it."

"The toughest thing about being a success is that you've got to keep on being a success."

"Talent is only the starting point."

"There is an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny."

 
Wikipedia: Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
In 1948
In 1948
Background information
Birth name Israel Isidore Baline
Born May 11 1888(1888--)
Flag of Russia Mogilev, Russian Empire (now Belarus)
Died September 22 1989 (aged 101)
Flag of the United States New York City, New York, United States
Genre(s) Broadway musicals,revues, show tunes
Occupation(s) Songwriter, composer, lyricist
Years active 1911 – 1962

Irving Berlin (IPA: /ˈɜrvɪŋ ˈbɜrlɪn/) (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist, and one of the most prodigious American songwriters in history. Berlin was one of the few Tin Pan Alley/Broadway songwriters who wrote both lyrics and music for his songs. Although he never learned to read music beyond a rudimentary level, with the help of various uncredited musical assistants or collaborators, he eventually composed over 3,000 songs, many of which (e.g. "God Bless America," "White Christmas," "Anything You Can Do," "There's No Business Like Show Business") left an indelible mark on American music and culture. In addition to his individual songs, he also composed 17 film scores and 21 Broadway scores.

Biography

Early life

Berlin was born Israel Isidore Baline[1] to an Ashkenazi-Jewish family in Mogilev, now Belarus (according to other sources possibly in Tyumen, Russia).[2] His family immigrated to the United States in 1893. His parents were Leah (Lena) Yarchin and Moses Baline; his father was a cantor who obtained work certifying kosher meat.[3]

Following the death of his father in 1896, Irving found himself having to work to survive. He did various street jobs, including selling newspapers and busking. The harsh economic reality of having to work or starve was to have a lasting effect on the way Berlin treated money. While working as a singing waiter at Pelham's Cafe in Chinatown, Berlin was asked by the proprietor to write an original song for the cafe because a rival tavern had had their own song published. "Marie from Sunny Italy," with music by Nick Nicholson, the cafe's pianist, was the result, and it was soon published. Although it only earned him 37 cents, it gave him a new career, and a new name: Israel Baline was misprinted as "I. Berlin" on the sheet music.

Berlin first worked solely as a lyricist and only began to attempt to compose music when a misunderstanding arose concerning his lyric "Dorando." He tried to sell the lyric to someone who assumed he had music to go with it. Although at the time he could play no instrument at all, he endeavored to come up with some with the help of an arranger. Throughout his career Berlin relied on musical assistants or collaborators. Cliff Hess worked for Berlin in this way from approximately 1912 to 1917 and was succeeded by Arthur Johnston and then Helmy Kresa. None of these musicians were ever credited as co-composers.

Berlin was a self-taught pianist and one who reputedly restricted himself mainly to the black keys of the piano. Eventually he bought a special piano with a lever under the keyboard, enabling him to transpose his music mechanically.[4] He once explained his compositional method thus: "I get an idea, either a title or a phrase or a melody, and hum it out to something definite. When I have completed a song and memorized it, I dictate it to an arranger."

Many of his earliest songs, among them "Sadie Salome (Go Home)," "That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune," and "Oh How That German Could Love," enjoyed modest success in sheet music form, as recordings, on the vaudeville stage, or as interpolations into stage shows, but it was "Alexander's Ragtime Band," written in 1911, that launched his career as one of Tin Pan Alley's brightest stars. Richard Corliss, in a Time magazine profile of Berlin in 2001, wrote:

Alexander's Ragtime Band (1911). It was a march, not a rag, and its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a bugle call and Swanee River. But the tune, which revived the ragtime fervor that Scott Joplin had stoked a decade earlier, made Berlin a songwriting star. On its first release, four versions of the tune charted at # 1, # 2, # 3 and # 4. Bessie Smith, in 1927, and Louis Armstrong, in 1937, made the top 20 with their interpretations. In 1938 the song was # 1 again, in a duet by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell; another Crosby duet, this time with Al Jolson, hit the top-20 in 1947. Johnny Mercer charted a swing version in 1945, and Nellie Lutcher put it on the R&B charts (# 13) in 1948. Add Ray Charles' brilliant big-band take in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in a bit under a half century.[5]

Works for the Musical stage

On the cover of Time magazine: May 28, 1934
Enlarge
On the cover of Time magazine: May 28, 1934

After the success of "Alexander", Berlin was rumored to be writing a "ragtime opera," but instead he produced his first full-length work for the musical stage, Watch Your Step (1914), starring Vernon and Irene Castle, the first musical comedy to make pervasive use of syncopated rhythms. A similar show entitled Stop! Look! Listen! followed in 1915.

In 1917, during World War I, he entered the United States Army and staged a musical revue, Yip Yip Yaphank, while at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York. Billed as "a military mess cooked up by the boys of Camp Upton," the cast of the show consisted of 350 members of the armed forces. The revue was a patriotic tribute to the United States Army, and Berlin composed a song entitled "God Bless America" for the show, but decided against using it. When it was released years later, "God Bless America" proved so popular that suggestions were made that it should become the National Anthem. It remains to this day one of his most successful songs and one of the most widely-known in the United States. A particularly famous rendition occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when members of the United States Congress stood together on the steps of the United States Capitol and sang Berlin's song.[5] Some songs from the Yaphank revue were later included in the 1943 movie This Is the Army featuring other Berlin songs, including the famous title piece, as well as a rendition of "God Bless America" by Kate Smith. Berlin himself sang "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". His natural singing voice was so soft that the recording volume had to be increased significantly in order to record acceptably.

After the war, Berlin built his own theater, the Music Box, as a showplace for annual revues featuring his latest songs; the first of these was "The Music Box Revue of 1921". The theater is still in use, incidentally. Though most of his works for the Broadway stage took the form of revues — collections of songs with no unifying plot — he did write a number of book shows. The Cocoanuts (1925) was a light comedy, with a cast featuring, among others, the Marx Brothers. Face the Music (1932) was a political satire with a book by Moss Hart, and Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician, obviously based on the exploits of Huey Long. As Thousands Cheer (1933) was a revue, also with book by Moss Hart, with a theme: each number was presented as an item in a newspaper, some of them touching on issues of the day. The show yielded a succession of hit songs, including "Easter Parade", "Heat Wave" (presented as the weather forecast), "Harlem on My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about racial bigotry that was sung by Ethel Waters.

During World War II, after receiving permission from General George Marshall, Berlin organized an all-soldier revue in the spirit of Yip Yip Yaphank. This Is the Army opened on July 4, 1942, with a cast of over 300 servicemen, and ran for three years, first on Broadway, then on tour in the United States, and then abroad. The US Army Soldier Show still exists today.

1999 Broadway Revival
Enlarge
1999 Broadway Revival

Berlin's most successful Broadway musical was Annie Get Your Gun (1946), produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music and lyrics were written by Berlin, with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. Berlin had taken on the job after the original choice, Jerome Kern, died suddenly. At first he refused to take on the job, claiming that he knew nothing about "hillbilly music", but the show ran for 1,147 performances. It is said that the showstopper song, "There's No Business Like Show Business", was almost left out of the show altogether because Berlin wrongly got the impression that Rodgers and Hammerstein did not like it. Annie Get Your Gun is considered to be Berlin's best musical theatre score not only because of the number of hits it contains, but because its songs successfully combine character and plot development.

Berlin's next show, Miss Liberty (1949), was a relative flop. Call Me Madam (1950), with Ethel Merman portraying the famous Washington hostess Perle Mesta, fared somewhat better, but his last show, Mr. President (1962), was such an unmitigated disaster that Berlin essentially retired from the public eye.

Berlin and Hollywood

In 1927, one of Berlin's songs, "Blue Skies," a hit from 1926, was featured in the first feature-length talkie (motion picture with sound) (previous talkies were shorts only), The Jazz Singer, in which it was sung by Al Jolson. Top Hat (1935) was the first of a series of distinctive film musicals pioneered by Berlin that featured popular and attractive performers (such as Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, and Ginger Rogers), light romantic plots, and a seemingly endless string of his new and old songs. Other films of this sort included On the Avenue (1937), Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946), and Easter Parade (1948). The film version of This Is the Army (1943), which featured Berlin himself singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," was a success, but film versions of several of his stage musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and Call Me Madam (1953), were somewhat less successful than his written-for-Hollywood shows.

White Christmas

White Christmas, 1995 re-release CD album cover
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White Christmas, 1995 re-release CD album cover

Holiday Inn introduced "White Christmas," one of the most-recorded songs in history. First sung in the film by Bing Crosby, it sold over 30 million copies when released as a record. The song was re-used as the title theme of the 1954 musical film, White Christmas, which starred Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. Crosby's single of "White Christmas" was recognized as the best-selling single in any music category for more than 50 years until 1997, when Elton John's tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, "Candle In the Wind," overtook it in a matter of months. However, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold additional millions of copies as part of numerous compilation albums, including his best-selling album Merry Christmas, which was first released as an LP in 1949.

The most familiar version of "White Christmas" is not the one Crosby originally recorded for Holiday Inn. Crosby was called back to the Decca studios on March 19, 1947, to re-record "White Christmas" as a result of damage to the 1942 master due to its frequent use. Every effort was made to reproduce the original Decca recording session, once again including the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers. The resulting re-issue is the one that has become most familiar to the public.

"White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an Original Song, one of seven Oscar nominations he received over the course of his career. He is the only winner in the history of the award to find his own name in the envelope on Oscar night.

His friend and fellow songwriter Jule Styne said of him, "It's easy to be clever. But the really clever thing is to be simple."[6] Asked to define Berlin's place in American music, Jerome Kern said he had none: "Irving Berlin is American music."

Personal life

Dorothy Goetz's grave (Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY)
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Dorothy Goetz's grave (Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY)

Berlin was married twice. His first wife, singer Dorothy Goetz, sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz, contracted pneumonia and typhoid fever on their honeymoon to Cuba, and died five months after their wedding in 1912 at the age of twenty. Her death inspired Berlin's song "When I Lost You", which became one of his earliest hits. Curiously, a year before Dorothy Berlin's death, Irving Berlin, E. Ray Goetz, and Ted Snyder co-wrote a song called "There's a Girl in Havana".

His second wife was Ellin Mackay, a devout Irish-American Catholic and heiress to the Comstock Lode mining fortune, as well as an avant-garde writer who had been published in The New Yorker. They were married in 1926, against the wishes of both his family, who objected to religious intermarriage, and her father, Clarence Mackay, a prominent Roman Catholic layman, who disinherited her.[7] Without a dispensation from the Church, the two were joined in a civil ceremony on January 4, 1926, and were immediately snubbed by society: Ellin was immediately disinvited from the wedding of her friend Consuelo Vanderbilt, although Vanderbilt was not a Catholic. Finances were not a problem, however: Berlin assigned her the rights to his song "Always" which yielded her a huge and steady income.

The couple had three daughters—Mary Ellin Barrett, Linda Emmett, and Elizabeth Peters — and a son, Irving Berlin, Jr., who died as an infant on Christmas Day.

Berlin's patriotism was real, and deep. Too old for military service when his country entered World War II in 1941, he devoted his time and energy to writing new patriotic songs, such as "Any Bonds Today?", donating the proceeds from This Is the Army to the army itself, and entertaining the troops with a road company of that show, in which he was a member of the cast. After performances in the United States, the show played in London in 1943, at a time when the city was still under air attack from Germany. After a tour of the British Isles, the show went on to North Africa and then Italy, playing in Rome only weeks after that city was liberated. Next came the Middle East and the Pacific, where performances often took place in close proximity to battle zones. In recognition of this important and courageous contribution to troop morale, at war's end Berlin was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Truman.

A political conservative, Berlin supported the presidential candidacy of General Dwight Eisenhower, and his song "I Like Ike" featured prominently in the Eisenhower campaign. In his later years he became conservative in his views on music, as well; he had no use for the new styles sweeping through American popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, such as rock 'n' roll, and he virtually gave up songwriting after the failure of Mr. President in 1962. In 1968, Berlin was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Becoming a virtual recluse in his last years, Berlin did not attend the 100th birthday party held in his honor. However, he did attend the centennial celebrations for the Statue of Liberty in 1986.

Berlin died of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 101 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

Trivia

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  • Became the oldest songwriter to have a hit in Billboard's Top 100 with Taco Ockerse's rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz" recorded in 1982.
  • Berlin's songs have become synonymous with Christmas and Easter, a fact Tom Lehrer had in mind when, explaining why he had written "I'm Spending Hannukah in Santa Monica," he quipped that America's Jewish songwriters were too busy writing tunes for Christian holidays.

Media

  • Follow the Crowd
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    1914
    Oh, How That German Could Love
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    1910
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Partial list of Berlin's songs

More Famous...


Less Well Known...

  • "Do Your Duty, Doctor"
  • "I'm A Dumbbell"
  • "I'm Going On A Long Vacation"
  • "I'm Not Prepared"
  • "I'm The Guy Who Guards The Harem"
  • "Lichtenburg"
  • "Lunching At The Automat"
  • "Maid of Mesh"
  • "Man Bites Dog"
  • "Ragtime Razor Brigade"
  • "Rum Tum Tiddle"
  • "Snookey Ookums"
  • "That Monkey Tune"
  • "The Chicken Walk"
  • "The Monkey Doodle Doo"
  • "The Race Horse and The Flea"
  • "The Washington Twist"
  • "Try It On Your Piano"
  • "You Need A Hobby"


References

  • Hischak, Thomas S. (1991). Word Crazy, Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim. ISBN 0-275-93849-2. 
  • Leopold, David (2005). Irving Berlin's Show Business : Broadway - Hollywood - America. ISBN 0-8109-5891-0. 
  • Barrett, Mary Ellin (1994). Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir. ISB